America's dark past of racial terror shows a grimmer and bleaker picture as revealed in a new study on lynching in the Jim Crow era.
Nearly 4,000 African-Americans were lynched in 12 southern U.S. states in a span of 73 years, with 503 victims in Arkansas alone.
The study titled "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror" was conducted by the Alabama-based human rights group Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and revealed that 3,959 African-Americans were lynched in Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia and Texas.
The researchers examined court records, interviewed historians, lynching survivors and also the victims' kin, and scrutinized historical archives in the period from 1877 to 1950 to arrive at the figure, making the alarming discovery that the lynching numbers were nearly 700 more than previously thought.
The Jim Crow era saw the enforcement of several racial segregation laws in the southern U.S. states after the end of the Reconstruction in 1877 and through the start of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The notorious era was characterized by the use of vehement tactics to subjugate African-Americans, which often included sinister methods such as lynching.
Lynchings involved the raiding of prisons by mobs not only to torture but also hang and burn black men, women and children alive -- sometimes even resulting in public executions. Such violence was more prevalent in the southern U.S. states than previously thought, based on the new report released on Tuesday, Feb. 10.
The study not only sheds light on the gory realities of America's gruesome past but also documents incidents where blacks were mutilated, dismembered and tortured in public lynchings as the whites -- including officials -- congregated to watch the horrors.
The sadistic pleasure derived is reflected by the fact that food was sold by vendors; the audience watched the scene unfold as they sipped on drinks; postcards that had photos of the corpse were published; and the body parts of the victim were even distributed as souvenir.
"Racial terror lynching was a tool used to enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation -- a tactic for maintaining racial control by victimizing the entire African-American community, not merely punishment of an alleged perpetrator for a crime," noted the report (pdf).
The report cited incidents such as that of Jesse Thornton, an Alabama resident, in 1940 when he was lynched for not addressing a white policeman "Mister." In 1916, Jeff Brown was lynched by men for bumping into a white girl accidentally as he rushed to catch a train.
According to the report, while blacks were accused or even murdered without any concrete reason for even minor outrages, not a single white individual was convicted for lynching or murdering an African-American in this ghastly era.
"Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in America and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African-Americans in ways that are still evident," revealed the study.
The EJI intends to raise funds to erect monuments honoring the victims.
